


Careful Fear and Dead Devotion

by whereismygarden



Series: Stargate Universe Rarepairs [5]
Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Chronic Illness, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:10:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Computational biology and convalescence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Careful Fear and Dead Devotion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeekingIdlewild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekingIdlewild/gifts).



> Rush/TJ fic for Hannah. I hope it suits you.
> 
> Many thanks to Potboy for looking this over and helping with the flow of it!

                There was a certain clarity that came with working on his projects at three in the morning. The same clarity, almost, as working on projects at three in the morning back on Earth. Everything was quiet, but the underlying hum of Destiny’s FTL engines were soothing, and the control interface room was empty and dark, the console screens the only source of light besides the faint blue glow from the corridors. It was easier to think in the dark, sometimes.

                He also had the benefit of being able to run whatever he wanted on Destiny’s core without other people’s stuff getting in the way. Currently, about ten percent of the spare processing power was being used up by other people’s long-term projects: Volker’s star system side project, Tamara’s work on protein analysis of her medicinals, and Park had had code compiling since she’d gone to bed. There was more than enough room to run a full diagnostic on the dialing code, but they had never done one before, and he had a faint worry that it might keep them from being able to dial while it ran, or stop incoming wormholes.

                He was too tired to work on that now, anyway. He pulled up the medical database, wondering about Tamara’s condition. They had done innumerable searches of the damn thing, with nothing to show for. The last one had had such broad parameters that it had turned up over five thousand results, none of which had lasted more than two narrowing-downs.

                There was, perhaps, a clue somewhere in the main database. He opened a command prompt and started typing out a few lines that would start by analyzing the portions of the database most likely to contain the information, then search those first. It would be nice if they could decompress Mandy and Ginn and Franklin, have them interrogate the database, but that was not an option. They were still fixing the damage to some systems’ codes that had been zipped down to make room for two consciousnesses roaming around. Even Destiny wasn’t built to have people moving around in and manipulating its systems, for all that there was plenty of storage space for them to sit quietly as non-executable files.

                Time to decide on search terms. The medical databases hadn’t turned up anything on hardening or death of motor neurons, even using the most broad definitions of Ancient roots. He needed to think like an Ancient, who were typically bizarre when it came to neurological matters. Or maybe they did not get ALS. Right. He had read Dr. Brightman’s report on ALS that Young had asked all the crew members fluent in Ancient to read to help with searching the database. Well, he was no doctor, and he couldn’t search from a doctor’s perspective.

>return: ‘myo* AND ocul* AND binning error’ ANDOR ‘myo* AND data point loss’ ANDOR ‘cerebr* AND data point loss’ ANDOR ‘myo* AND ocul* AND table merging error’ ANDOR ‘myo* AND hashed array tree AND pointer loss’ ANDOR ‘myo* AND symmetry loss’

                The search would take a good few hours, so he would go ahead and work on something else in the meantime. Reviewing the dialing diagnostics code, maybe, so they could run it soon.

~

                TJ was in the middle of distilling oil from the latest batch of what Scott had dubbed ‘pepperweed’ for its distinctive smell. This particular stuff came out at almost the same temperature as water, so she had screwed on the tallest still head Brody had to offer. Based on the current rate of evaporation, she had at least fifteen minutes before she had any product, but she couldn’t leave it unmonitored. It smelled like concentrated pepper and the rattling of the stir bar among the wilted yellow leaves had driven James out with a weak excuse.

                There was a knock on the open door of the infirmary, and Dr. Rush walked in. TJ offered him a smile.

                “Hi, Dr. Rush,” she said. He looked terrible, deep shadows under his eyes, but he had never come by to ask about sleep aids before, and she doubted he was now. Besides, he looked happy, smiling more than she could remember in possibly a year.

                “Tamara,” he said. “I have something that may interest you.”

                “Well, anything is more interesting than playing ‘kid in first semester organic lab,’” she said, indicating her still.

                “You can’t get someone else to do the grunt work for you?” he asked.

                “Not when I’m extracting an analgesic oil from a new species,” she said. He nodded. “What is this, new plants to work on? Results from my protein structure program?” She would really like that: she had managed to get a new toy of the Ancients’ working to analyze protein structures that rivaled the newest programs on Earth. She was turning out to be a decent biochemist, she thought.

                “I had a new idea for interrogating the database with regards to your ALS,” he said, and the hope that spiked up in her chest at that was so good it hurt. She forced it down relentlessly.

                “We didn’t find anything,” she reminded him.

                “I have, I ran a new search,” he said excitedly. “There are hardly any resources for neurodegenerative diseases in the medical database, because the Ancients didn’t think about neurology the way that we do.”

                “So what did you find?” He walked over to the console, typing in a few commands.

                “There are thousands of articles on things like Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, ALS, and other neurological disorders. It’s all indexed to the sections of the database on spirituality, Ascension, and computing.” That made no sense to her.

                “Computing?” she asked. Rush shrugged.

                “That’s how I found it. The information on how the nervous system works is conceptualized the way we think about data structures.”

                “That seems flawed,” she said, trying to control the tremor in her voice. Rush moved back from the console, which now displayed a list of articles from the database.

                “These should be searchable, and now that we have a better idea of how to do the searches, we will hopefully find more than my late-night impulses retrieve.”

                She looked at the long, long list of files, names displayed with Ancient words she mostly couldn’t read, feeling her heart strain with hope, springing up like a trampled seedling. Her vision was turning blurry with unshed tears, and she pressed her hand to her mouth, taking in an uneven breath.

                “Oh my God, thank you!” she exclaimed, and wrapped her arms around him. He froze, then hugged her back slightly. She pulled away, giving him a tearful smile. “Sorry for that.”

                “No matter,” he said, smiling back. “It’s only the beginning.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’ll watch your distillation if you need a few minutes, or if you want to start looking through those.” He walked over to the bench, pulling one of his little notebooks from his pocket, and sat down after checking the thermometer.

                “It will beep if it gets half a degree too hot or cold,” she told him. Her voice was still shaky, overly emotional, even to her own ears. She sat down at the console, but couldn’t start reading as tears filled her eyes. God, she had some hope. No guarantee of a fighting chance, but over four thousand results from a first-pass search was a good start.

~

                The slow slide of pale, translucent yellow oil into a round flask and the quiet hissing of the water flowing through the condenser was soothing, and he could pretend he didn’t hear Tamara having a private cry over at the console. He wanted to go over and say something, the urge to comfort going deep, but he knew he had nothing to say. She had a lot to think about.

                His radio crackled.

                “Eli to Rush. Where are you?” He turned down the volume somewhat. “Rush, seriously.”

                “What do you want?” he snapped.

                “There are diagnostic programs I’ve never seen before open in the control interface room.” Shit. He’d been so excited when his search finished that he hadn’t closed anything else he’d been doing after he saved the results.

                “I’ll explain later. _Don’t_ run them. Rush out.” Even with the relatively tight seal of the still, it smelled very strongly of pepper. Maybe their diet would be improving, along with their medicine. Though, if he had to eat the tough-looking yellow leaves circling in the flask, it might not be worth it, or possible.

                “Did you eat anything at breakfast?” Tamara asked him, interrupting his train of thought about the dialing code diagnostics. A good amount of oil had collected in the flask, and there was only about a centimeter left in the still head. Tamara turned off the hot plate, and the quiet rattling of the stir bar ceased.

                “No, I came here after I finished the search.” He turned his head to look at her. She looked happy.

                “I only just started to look through them, but there are definitely some that deal with ALS,” she said, voice joyful. “Come on, you look terrible, you should eat.”

                “Fine,” he said, because his head was starting to hurt, and he didn’t want to deal with Eli anyway. She put another catching flask under the condenser spout, put a stopper into the one with the collected oil, and set it into a container of water.

                “I’ll clean up later,” she said. “Or get James to do it.” Something about that amused her, and she picked up her radio. “Colonel, I’ll be in the mess if there’s an emergency.”

                “Right,” Young’s voice agreed.

                Only the very late risers were still in the mess, but there was still some food to be had, if you used the word loosely, and he sat down across from Tamara.

                “So why did you think of searching that way?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the lukewarm temperature of the breakfast gruel.

                “I don’t know how to do a search like a doctor, only like a programmer,” he said. “And we know the Ancients had some ideas that were different from ours. It’s only a start, but if you need any help, just tell me.”

                “Yeah, I will,” she said, her blue-green eyes shining. “I haven’t felt so happy in months.” He could say the same. “Who else did you tell?”

                “No one yet. I thought you should hear first.”

                “I’m going to go to the bridge and tell the colonel,” she said. “And then Camile, I guess.” He scraped the inside of his bowl and choked down the last of the mixture.

                “I’ll walk with you, I need to talk to Volker anyway.” Technically, he could wait, but he was loathe to leave the atmosphere of hope surrounding her.

~

                Rush was clearly bored, a state she had previously only seen him in during crew meetings, but he was being pleasant and she was more than happy to walk to the bridge with him.

                “This will be good for Earth as well,” she said. “There is probably information we can pass to the medical researchers at the SGC in the files you found.” Rush gave her a strange look, something like pain shining in his eyes, but he smiled again, shaking his head a little. “What?” she asked.

                “Healers,” he said. “You’re already thinking about how you can help other people with this.” She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, because there was a touch of something that sounded like admiration in his tone, and she hadn’t heard that from him before. She shrugged a little, smiled back, and continued to the bridge.

                The colonel, Volker, and James were there: Volker was explaining something on one of the consoles to James, whose eyes were extremely lost. The colonel was in the command chair, eyes distant as he looked out at the faint, flickering stars and the aurora trails of FTL over Destiny. He straightened a little and turned as she walked towards him.

                “TJ,” he said, and sneezed. Right. James flicked her eyes over, looking slightly worried, as if TJ had come to follow her.

                “That’s the pepperweed,” she said, biting back a smile. “Sorry, sir.”

                “Is there any trouble?” he asked. She didn’t usually come up to the bridge.

                “The opposite,” she replied, breaking out into a smile, holding back the potential of new tears. She looked over at Rush, who hadn’t come closer, nor gone over to Volker, and jerked her head at him. He walked forward, and Young raised his eyebrows, waiting. “Dr. Rush found a new way to search the database for medical information. And found results about ALS.”

                Young didn’t speak for a long moment, looking up at her with a joyful light in his multicolored eyes. She could read the tension in his body, see him push down the urge to kiss or embrace or touch her, and felt a corresponding ache in her hands. She tried not to miss him, and it was painful when she did, but the grin that broke out on his face was relieved, hopeful, downright beautiful. He reached his hands out, grabbed hers and Rush’s.

                “That’s great,” he said, as Rush extracted his hand from Young’s grip, looking miffed. “I’m so glad.”

                “Is it all right if I put more research time towards this?” she asked.

                “Of course,” he said, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Of course, just let me or Camile know what Earth experts you might need and we’ll get them onboard.”

                “Right,” she said, and laughed as James raced up from her seat next to Volker and crashed into her sideways, giving her a hug.

                “This is amazing,” she said, squeezing her, and even flashed Rush a grin.

                “You want to clean the still?” TJ asked, and she just nodded, not seeming upset at the request.

                “Yes ma’am,” she said, and hurried out of the bridge. TJ figured she was going to tell half the people on the ship the news on her way, but that was okay. Young settled back into the chair, but his posture was more open, and there was the edge of a smile on his mouth.

                Rush walked past her, towards Volker, but he touched her shoulder on the way, squeezing gently, surprising her.

                Later that evening, he came back to the infirmary. She had had a parade of visitors that day, and been hugged by half the ship. It made her hopeful, despite the lack of guarantee in the results.

                “Park and Eli have a plan,” he said. “Want to see?” She followed him to the control interface room, where the entire science team was in full discussion mode. The atmosphere reminded her fondly of her discussion classes in college.

                “TJ!” Eli said. “Park knows the most about biology, so she’s been helping me refine the search Rush did, and we have a roughly ordered list of things most likely to be helpful.”

                “We really could use a real biologist,” Park said. “No offense, TJ. You’re pretty good.”

                “Oh, I know we could use a real expert,” she said ruefully. She felt like she spent all of her time on Earth getting a crash course in advanced genetics and biochemistry so she could continue to try and make medicine.

                “Yeah, I miss Franklin,” Volker said, and winced as Rush gave him a glare.

                “Yes well, the point is that all of us are at your disposal with regard to Ancient translations, analyzing the files, and anything else,” Rush said. “I’m sure you will have other volunteers as well.” He crowded Eli from his console and put in a few commands. “These are the top hundred results, according to Eli and Dr. Park.”

                “Right,” she said. “Thanks, you guys.” God, she was crying a lot today.

                “Hey, no problem,” Eli said. “This is more productive than running analysis on that pattern in the CBR.” Rush turned his disapproving glare on him, but he didn’t seem fazed. “Just let us know.”

~

                The past few weeks had mostly had the effect of hammering home how little he knew about biology. When he wasn’t working on Destiny’s systems, going through the gate, or fixing problems that arose almost every day, he went to the infirmary to help Tamara.

                Barnes had been sent to Atlantis for two weeks and Dr. Keller, whom he had never met before, had come to help with the analysis, being the universe’s foremost expert on bioengineering or something of that nature. She and Tamara had spent something like eighteen hours a day combing through the articles and reports. They had developed what amounted to a first plan of attack, involving a long list of things that would need to be done, none of which he understood. He wasn’t used to being in the position of anything other than an expert. Brody, who had apparently worked in a biology lab as a young man, found a number of machines and tools in some of the closed-off areas and was working on fixing them. Park had written, under Dr. Keller’s direction, a program to help with screening blood samples from the crew. Even Eli and Chloe, with Becker’s help, had been put to work pouring agar and making something called “selection media.”

                He and Volker were basically useless, and it was terrible. He hated sitting by and not being able to do anything about a problem, especially problems that took people’s lives. He listened to Tamara and Dr. Keller, read a number of files in the database about genetics, and made himself available to help.

                “So Colonel Young and Lieutenant James are the closest matches for donors,” Dr. Keller said. She was here for a weekend, having switched with Camile. Apparently her body was currently on Earth. “Now that the freezer’s working, we can go ahead and do the procedure this weekend if they’re healthy enough.”

                Rush, at one of the benches running an analysis that Tamara was very excited about, looked up.

                “Donors of what?” he asked.

                “Spinal fluid,” Dr. Keller said. She was very tolerant of his being in the infirmary and occasionally asking questions. “If all goes well, we’ll be able to administer retroviral therapy and supplemental proteins, but I anticipate a problem with downregulating some of Lieutenant Johansen’s genes. We’re trying to synthesize some of the proteins we might need, but we should have an emergency supply on hand anyway.”

                This sounded completely horrifying to Rush, but Young and James went under her scalpel, emerging with small bandages on the backs of their necks, and two small tubes of clear liquid went into the freezer.

                It was five months before the first treatment was ready: Chloe had lifted up one of the selection plates with a triumphant cry, and there had followed four days of intense work. He had been put in charge of the thermal cycler, adding nucleotide and enzyme solutions that had had to be made from scratch, and primers that had been even more work. He understood the primers, at least, because he had written the program that would work out how to link up all the pieces of DNA they needed. Tamara had explained it to him, trying to remove jargon.

                “So we’re going to make it inducible, and co-transform in a kill switch,” she said. “It would not be good if the treatment gave me cancer.”

                “Yeah,” he had agreed quietly, and added in another line of code to proofread the primers.

                James didn’t want to give the injection, which was possibly the most dubious medical treatment cooked up from genes harvested from all over their current galaxy Rush had ever seen, so Dr. Keller was called back from Atlantis.

                He had nothing to do, so he sat in his thinking corridor and worked on the mission. He had been distracted from it, helping Tamara as best as he could, but it needed attention.

                When he emerged, Tamara was lying face down in the infirmary, an IV taped to the back of her hand. James was sitting down, looking at a piece of leaf that the gate team had brought back from the latest planet.

                “Hey,” Tamara said, smiling at him. James stood up. Tamara waved a hand at her.

                “Dismissed,” she said wearily, and she hurried out. “She gets restless.” Rush sat down next to her bed.

                “How was it?” he asked.

                “Typical needle in the spine,” she said dryly. “I’m a bit drugged.”

                “I’ll sit with you,” he offered, and brought a glass of water, holding it up to her mouth. She sipped and gave him a smile. She was always smiling, even if it was slightly sad sometimes.

                “You have a surprisingly good bedside manner,” she said. He tried to smile back, but it didn’t happen.

                “Practice,” he said roughly, and she nodded, eyes drifting closed.

~

                Two weeks and several blood samples after the injection, she started taking the inducing supplements. The pepperweed had turned out to have a useful enzyme in its roots, which triggered a promoter in various terrestrial animals. That promoter was now spliced into her DNA, regulating genes that controlled myelation and blood flow and health of her motor neurons.

                It made her feel sick as hell, and she spent the first day puking her guts up into a basin while Rush brought her cold water and bits of ice for her neck and face. He was surprisingly tender about all of it, not encouraging her to get into bed when she said she felt better on the chilly, hard floor of the infirmary. Varro brought her food, and whatever was between him and Rush sent him retreating at Rush’s glare after he set the tray down.

                “I don’t know if I can eat,” she said, and he pulled some of the loose strands of her hair back from her face, where they were sticking uncomfortably.

                “There’s this bland flatbread,” he said. “Might stay down.”

                “Thanks for staying with me,” she said, putting her cheek against the cool floor. Her head spun worse when she closed her eyes, so she was staring at the legs of the infirmary beds and the edge of Rush’s low boot.

                “It’s no trouble,” he said. He sounded slightly absent, and had his laptop open, but every so often he would get another piece of ice from the cooler next to him, dry off her neck and face, and give her the new ice.

                “You don’t have things to do?”

                “Nothing extremely pressing,” he said. “Is that you telling me to get lost, or just being conscientious?”

                “You can stay,” she said. He had been in the infirmary a lot, offering his help with writing code and going through the database for references. James, perplexed by him, had apparently gone asking around and found out from Chloe that his wife had died of cancer. Perhaps the prospect of more chronic illness was too upsetting for him, but she would have expected him to withdraw instead of come forward. She was glad he was around regardless: Varro, for all that he seemed worried about her, had disappeared from the infirmary once it became so full of people. And even though there was less frenetic research going on now that Jennifer had given her the injection, she was more used to Rush’s presence than Varro’s.

                It took her a few days to recover from the first test, but her analysis showed that she had upregulation in all areas. There would be no way to know if it was working, not until her symptoms were supposed to come in, but it was positive. She burst into tears at the readout, wiping them away while James and Scott high-fived.

                “TJ, you’re a genius,” Scott proclaimed, and disappeared to tell Eli and Chloe.

                Rush showed up at her door that night. She was half-expecting Varro, and was surprised at the relief and warmth that blossomed in her chest that it was Rush instead.

                “I heard the news,” he said, smiling outright. It made his face look both older and younger, and she drew him into a hug. This time, he returned it fully, and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll let you get some rest.” He pulled away, seeming a bit embarrassed about his gesture. “You still look ill.” She snickered at that, and he looked slightly confused.

                “You certainly know how to compliment a woman,” she said, smiling because she hadn’t taken any offense, and he just looked more embarrassed, sidling away from the door. “Good night,” she said, and let him retreat. She did still feel a bit weak, and wasn’t sure how she felt about taking the treatment once a week if it was going to make her feel like this. But they were still working, for a better solution, and she was grateful she had anything at all.

                Things on the ship settled down to normal. She supposed that from some people’s perspective, nothing had really changed, but she’d ended up with a lot more equipment in her infirmary, a lot more knowledge about obscure therapies, and a much more competent assistant: James had had to take on more of her usual duties. It was probably good, because though she had some tolerance for her therapy now, it still laid her out for at least twenty-four hours, during which time she couldn’t do much more than lie down and vomit. James was in charge of setting bones and giving stitches during those times.

                Scott, Greer, the colonel, Varro, and a variety of others came down to sit with her from time to time, but Rush was the most consistent. Once, when she was in slightly less discomfort than usual, the colonel came in and she saw him and Rush sizing each other up. Young’s face darkened, then cleared, and he walked up to her, setting down a battered book.

                “I know you’re sick, but maybe someone could read to you.”

                “Thanks,” she whispered, and he nodded, turning away. He had been downright unkind a few times, when she was getting close with Varro, but he seemed to be less upset about Rush. Well. There was a good chance he didn’t really see Rush as competition, or if not competition, because there was nothing reparable there for her, then not as being romantically interested in her. There was a good chance, also, that Rush didn’t think of this as anything like that, but the way he looked at her sometimes, his eyes brimming with something beautiful and dark, made her think not. She didn’t approach, him, though, because she had learned her lesson about being too willing to take the place of damaged men’s wives. When she made that decision, though, sitting with her head between her knees and a cold rag on her neck, she knew she _wanted_ Rush, and missed at least a chapter of his reading aloud to contemplate it.

~

                Watching Tamara lie on the floor, too nauseous to lift her head, had brought back more memories than Rush had ever wanted to relive at once. He brought ice and bland food and helped her keep cool or warm alternately: he suspected someone else on the crew must know how to do all these things, but he found himself surprisingly willing to do them himself. It helped that Tamara, aside from her patience and gentleness and waves of golden hair, was very little like Gloria. She was inclined to laugh at any foolish thing James or Eli said, had a tendency to work herself to exhaustion that Gloria had never liked in him, and sometimes said things that shocked him into remembering how American-military she was.

                That made some of the remembered anguish easier to shed, and this was a positive thing, really. Medicine that could work. Would work. It didn’t make the feelings that came out of a slight letting-go of his anxiety any easier to deal with, though. The feeling of fondness and comfort that he felt around her was upsetting once he let himself feel it. He had wanted to be done with the pain and tenderness and distraction of love. It appeared that was not an option, however, and he found himself thinking about her in the moments between projects, missing her when she wasn’t around, feeling lonely in his quarters when he had never been lonely before.

                There was little he could do to comb through the medical articles for better treatments, besides rudimentary translation, but Tamara said she was content to go through them a few a day herself, with occasional help. He hadn’t spent time nodding off over work in the infirmary in months.

                “It sucks in here,” she said, when she was sitting curled up on an infirmary bed, half an hour after her weekly IV of reddish-brown enzymes and saline.

                “You may have the wrong profession,” he said, having arrived with Becker’s best anti-nausea tea and carbohydrate-of-some-kind crackers.

                “I guess I understand why people hate hospitals. The experiences they have in them are pretty awful.” She was starting to get a sheen of sweat on her brow near her hairline.

                “Yes,” he agreed, and stood there, unsure if she wanted the food. “Do you want to go somewhere else then? Probably best to move before you start feeling really ill.”

                “Go where?”

                “Your quarters? Mine?” It wouldn’t be practical to go anywhere public, or busy.

                “Mine are closer,” she said, and leaned on him while they walked back. He settled down with his back against her bed as she lay face down on the floor. “Is it terrible of me to hate that I have to do this, when I should just be grateful that I won’t die?”

                “I think you have every right to resent your disease.” He reached out to drum his fingers on her shoulder. “Think how grateful your motor neurons will be,” he said lightly.

                “Oh, please,” she said, but laughed a little into the floor, which had been his goal. He opened his laptop, pulled up the results of his last diagnostic on the air circulators. This would take a little time.

                “You’re so brave,” he said quietly. She tilted her head to look at him, and he met her curious gaze for a second before snapping his back to the screen of his laptop. He had said it on impulse, and now his chest was hammering. “I mean it, Tamara.”

                “Thanks,” she said, and curled her hand around his ankle, squeezing a little. “You’re improving on compliments,” she added, lightening the mood.

                “Do you want more compliments?” he teased, unable to stop from looking back at her and raising his eyebrows. She smiled back at him, tucking her lower lip behind her teeth for a second, eyes warm enough to send a shock of confused heat through his chest and a seethe of anxious anticipation swirling through his stomach. He ducked his head, lowering his eyes again, and hoped he wasn’t turning flushed. The circulators could use more work in the central quarters. He would start as soon as he left.

                The next planet Destiny dropped out at was, according to the kino feed, something like a dream: perfect temperatures, about 21 degrees, with a rich variety of vegetation and dark, mineral-rich earth. Becker, Scott, Eli, Tamara, Brody, and himself were the gate team for this one: Becker and Tamara for food and medicinals, Scott to keep watch, himself and Brody to do soil samples, and Eli to “help.” Mostly the lad would poke around, but he came across useful things every so often.

                The soil turned out to not have much interesting in it besides a lot of nitrogen, so they gathered a few sledfuls of it for the rooted-plants portion of hydroponics and went to digging up seedlings and harvesting berries and some odd, tough-coated fruit that, when cracked, was full of pulpy yellow flesh that smelled like vanilla and mango. Brody had suspended a sack from a branch overhanging a particularly heavy-laden berry bush and was clearing it with remarkable speed. Rush didn’t much care for the monotony of fruit-picking, and gathered a respectable amount of the mango-nuts before becoming too frustrated and wandering over to where Tamara was dropping pieces of leaves into small vials of clear liquids.

                “What’s this?” he asked. She shrugged.

                “Just a reaction test for certain alkaloids. This little thing—“ she flicked a nail against a thick-stemmed, ugly herb with small shriveled flowers—“could be full of caffeine.” Suddenly the little plant was much more appealing. Alien tea. With actual caffeine. He was weaned off it now, had been for years, but the faint memory of the kick it gave made him regard the pile of leaves and seed fondly.

                “That would be nice,” he said. She gave him a frown.

                “I’m not letting anyone get dependent even if that is the case,” she said sternly.

                “Of course,” he said. She looked much improved from two days ago, full of color, like one of the more aesthetically pleasing flowers on this planet. There was something that looked very like a camellia blooming near the gate, but the blooms were striated with silvery, reflective veins unlike anything on Earth. A great deal had been plucked and sent through the gate for everyone to marvel at. “The outdoors suits you.” She smiled slightly.

                “I love it when we find planets like this,” she said, standing up from her crouch and brushing her hands off on her fatigues. “I grew up in the Cascade foothills, it’s like being home.”

                “If your home is anything like this, it must be lovely.” No wonder it had produced someone as lovely as Tamara, whereas his home had produced him. Though, he thought he could reflect the Glasgow shipyards much more than he actually did and had escaped pretty definitively.

                “Do you miss home?” she asked. He frowned slightly. He missed the home he’d had, but he’d missed it on Earth.

                “Destiny is my home now,” he said. That was the truth. She gave him a gentle smile, as if she had expected that answer, and there was nothing like pity in her eyes. He leaned forward, adrenaline making his whole body cold, and tilted his head up to kiss her. He paused a few centimeters from her mouth, glancing between her lips and her eyes, waiting for her to step back.

                She kissed him. Her hand, a little rough with dirt and sap, came up to hold the side of his face and his own grimy hands ended up on her waist. They had all tasted some of the fruit once they knew it was okay, and her mouth had hints of sharply sweet berries and the less astringent but stronger mango taste, along with the bite of the dirt on this planet: she had been wiping sweat of her mouth with the back of her hand, maybe.

                She broke away, eyes wide and her lips curling up into a smile. There was a flush on her cheeks more than the sun could account for.

                “Well,” she said. “I couldn’t quite tell if that was how you felt, before.” He looked down at the ground.

                “I didn’t mean to just…do that,” he admitted.

                “It’s been a bit of a slow build, hasn’t it?” she said wryly, and he was glad she had felt the same slide towards affection as he had.

                “Shall we eat dinner together?” he ventured, half-teasing, so he could take it back if she didn’t want to.

                “We have to collect dinner first,” she said. “There are more of those berry bushes Becker found that way, if that was what you were looking for.” She gave him a mischievous grin. “But I’ll eat with you.”

                That night, he knew he wasn’t imagining Varro’s dark looks or Young’s careful indifference, but those paled in comparison to Tamara’s arm brushing up against his. He also had to contend with the alternating smirking and horrified looks from James and Greer and Park, who were Tamara’s usual dinner companions. Well, Park didn’t so much as give looks as raise her eyebrows over the frames of her dark glasses, but the point was that he felt very stared at.

                He left the mess without Tamara, because he didn’t want to risk Young’s wrath, and because he had eaten fast and had other responsibilities. But he couldn’t help but run his hand over his lips as he worked, calling up exactly how her mouth had felt on his.

~

                Being in a relationship with Rush wasn’t that different from being friends with him, TJ discovered. At least, that was the case ninety percent of the time. When they were alone together, he was so affectionate that it took her breath away to think that he had had all of this inside him for so long. He was so full of hesitant smiles and sweetness that it threw her for a few days, but it turned out she could stand lying on the floor trying to wish away the feeling that her head was floating away (and not in the good way) much better with his hand rubbing up and down her back and neck. And despite his bony frame, he was surprisingly comfortable to lean against.

                She learned a few things the first time she pulled him into bed, a week after their kiss: one, they were both used to being on top, two, his beard left red irritated patches on her skin, and three, for all his age and European-ness, she was more sexually adventurous than he was. These were all things that were more fun than not, however, and she’d never been with anyone who so clearly got off on getting her off before.

                Three weeks after the kiss, he knocked on her door with a cleverly dried flower from the beautiful planet in his hand and a shy yet smug look on his face.

                “How did you do that?” she asked, admiring the preservation of the petals.

                “Secret,” he said. She sniffed it: it smelled a little burned, and like some of her sample fixers and varnish. She set it down on her table, thinking she would tie it up with string later, and kissed him. He was charming like this, nipping at her mouth and stroking his hands through her hair, undoing her careful braids. She was still getting used to thinking of him as “Nick” in this context, rather than Rush, but she very much liked what they were doing. Occasionally her stomach dropped and chilled when she saw him looking at her like his whole heart was coming through his eyes, because she was still afraid of that kind of love and didn’t see why he wasn’t.

                “Sure it is,” she jabbed, turned him so the backs of his knees were against her bed. He smiled against her mouth, moved his lips to her jaw.

                “Tamara,” he breathed out, his hand tightening in her hair. He never called her TJ. That was probably for the best.

                “Nick,” she rejoined, shoving him down and easing her leg over his hips so that when she pulled herself on top of him, their hips ground together. His hands moved to her hips, fingertips sliding under the fabric of her tank top, slow and patient and hungry. She shivered and leaned down to kiss him again, stripping off their clothes and letting him run his hands over her.

                He had a very insistent habit of making her come first, and last too if he could, for all that it had been just a week and a half, and she loved the feeling of his callused, meticulous fingers at her clit while she rode him until they were both sweaty and spent and panting for breath. For such a cerebral man, he had a bent for the sensual that served them well, and she told him so.

                “Mathematics is the sexiest discipline,” he said, while she tried to neaten his hair, which was sprayed out around his face wildly. “After medicine,” he amended, grinning at her. That drew a bit of a laugh from her, and he brushed his hair back from his face in a way that would mean it tangled horribly later.

                “And linguistics,” she said. “And physics. And—“

                “Shh,” he interrupted, putting his arm around her waist and drawing her close. She let him, enjoying the feel of warm skin against hers for a few minutes. She could feel him wanting to say something, but all that happened was him stroking her arm and shoulder for a long moment and eventually sitting up.

                “Night, Nick,” she said, even though he was going to go back to messing around on the consoles instead of sleeping. It was an even bet whether he ended up back here or in his actual quarters or not sleeping at all. Either way, she really shouldn’t begrudge his spending time poking through Destiny’s systems late at night.

                “I could stay,” he said slowly. “I don’t have much to do, really.” She pulled him to lie down next to her, looping an arm around his neck.

                “I want you to stay, too,” she said, and he closed his eyes, smiling very slightly, and she fitted her free hand over his, feeling a spark of something that she could recognize as love, even if admitting it was a daunting prospect. If all went well…if all went well, and they had put so much into it, and still were…if all went well, there were still no guarantees disaster wouldn’t strike, but the feeling unfolding like a fan in her chest made her feel bright and hopeful and glad that Rush and his unexpected devotion were sleeping next to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Mixing it up with a Stargate Atlantis guest star this time.
> 
> All of Rush's query is bullshit approximated from what I looked up on Wikipedia about data structures. All of the work on synthesizing TJ's treatment is loosely based in real biology :D
> 
> Title from "Don't Swallow the Cap" by the National. The full line is "I have only two emotions, careful fear and dead devotion" and I think those suited TJ and Rush's respective attitudes throughout the story.


End file.
